OUTATIME
by OnnaMurcielago666
Summary: Watching John walk away, Casey's mind replayed Security's warning last night. "Dave told Rose that he saw Captain Creepy escape in what might've been a time rift, but he wasn't sure. He said he'd check the stream for a flux when he felt better..." Casey took off toward home and, passing where the Betakids' statue should've been, she realized something was very, very wrong.
1. OUTATIME

When the front door opened, Casey looked up from the splendid birthday table set before her and her whole face fell. Dave was not, as she had hoped, dressed for 'a real Strider party'. In his God Tier, he looked like a pillar of blood and menace, for all his heroic deeds, and she staggered when she ran to meet him in the archway.

"Daddy?" Casey tried to put her usual smoothness into her voice, but Fear was tightening its grip around her throat. It was barely a whisper - a child's imploring whimper from her seventeen year-old throat.

"Not now, Casey." Pushing past her without difficulty, Dave grabbed John's arm as he came out of the kitchen, bearing Casey's birthday cake, and he made the windy-haired hero put it down. They spoke in hurried, hushed tones, their eyes constantly flickering to and from her horrified expression, and suddenly John was soaring up the main staircase.

"What's wrong?" Casey's voice found her at last. "Why are you both so quiet?"

"Not _now_, Case." Dave hesitated to touch her face as though he was infected, and she shivered faintly for some reason she didn't quite understand when he turned his back on her. "We have to go, but we'll be back soon. I want you to go downstairs and stay there."

"'Downstairs'? Why?" Casey grabbed her father's cape helplessly, holding him back and pleading with him, and felt as if she were seven instead of seventeen. When Dave looked back at her, she blinked her startlingly-blue eyes until he couldn't resist. "Dad… what is going _on_?"

"There's an emergency in the town square and the mayor called us." John said shortly, floating down beside them with what Casey had dubbed his Betaphone clenched tightly in his right hand. Upon further inspection, Casey could see Dave's poking out of his pocket and she suddenly and childishly despised the little device.

"Can't I come with you?" Casey protested, abandoning her attempts to sway her more flexible father and crowded John. "I'm seventeen, Dad, and you have barely taught me _anything_ about using my aspects. I don't even take the class for it in school because you rigged it with my principal!"

"Case, it's not a good time." The way her blond father spoke to her suddenly made her feel small again, and Casey's mouth filled with foam at the idea of yelling at him. Of her two fathers, she had never really argued with Dave; he seemed to take her opinion into account more so than John, even if she didn't end up getting her way in the long run.

Casey sighed: "But it's the _perfect_ opportunity for me to see how _you guys_ do it. It's my seventeenth birthday, and you're going off to do the daring do, and I'm _stuck_ here…" She scuffed her toe against the carpet and stuck her hands into her pants pockets, peeking up at them both morosely. "_Please?_"

"Not a chance." John said stubbornly, "It's too dangerous, and you are not leaving this house until we get back, Casey Egbert Strider." He cut Dave off before he could speak, putting a hand on his short spouse's shoulder, and he stared their daughter down sternly. "Don't try those puppy eyes on me, Casey. I _gave_ you those puppy eyes, and I'm putting my foot down."

"John-" "_Dave_," "Dads!" Casey scowled as her fathers fought, only stopping when she called them. "I want to come! I want to _help_!" She concentrated, pulling winds to her, and she was floating. "See? I got wind under control a few days ago and-"

"Spider." John deadpanned.

With a fearful shriek, Casey lifted her legs and, somersaulting from the sudden action, she soared toward their house's high ceiling. Only the guiding winds sent by her dark-haired father kept her from braining herself on the shining chandelier to which she now clung.

"Casey," John's voice was strained, given a razor edge by the ringing of his Betaphone. "you are going to go downstairs" -Carefully, he used his powers to blow her down to the ground and he let her get her bearings before he let go of her.- "and I'll send a-"

"A babysitter?!" Casey looked devastated, the hoodie she'd stolen from Dave's boxes in the attic falling off one shoulder from her excursion to the ceiling. "I'm seven_teen_, not seven, Dad! I can take care of myself!"

"Vriska will be-" "_That_ bitch?" Casey ignored John's rebuke for her language guiltlessly and Dave snorted while John looked momentarily scandalized. "Don't stick me with her, Daddy, please! I'd take Equius or _Eridan_ over that spidery witch!"

"_John,_" It was Dave's turn to push John to hurry. He touched the wind-powered man gently and clenched his free hand into a tight fist. "Rose and Jade started."

"Without us?" John whipped out his phone as though Casey wasn't even there –he had been insistent on not having a device at his hip when he spent time with her- and his shock melted into horror. "What were they thinking?!"

"Scroll down." Dave muttered, his mouth a tight, grim slash carved into his usually relaxed jaw. "He started attacking civilians… there were kids there, John." Sighing heavily, Dave slipped the device into his pocket and suddenly couldn't look at Casey. In turn, she felt a sickness grow in the pit of her stomach and she winced when John's eyes met hers. He was no longer the battle-axe dad from a few moments ago; he was a frightened, sympathetic father. He was imagining if it had been Casey in the town square, and his imagination was obviously very, very vivid.

She tried to tell herself that her fathers were needed somewhere else, tried to put herself in a bystander's perspective like John had, but her anger was a firm root to the now and she was still upset. It was her birthday, for God's sake, and she wanted it to be about her.

"Just go." Casey mumbled, hugging herself and refusing to look at her fathers again. "It doesn't matter. It's fine." She sees Dave sigh and reach for her out of the corner of her eye, his red-gloved hand blurred and bloody-looking, but he hesitates and she twitches angrily when he glance back at his Betaphone. It had chirped cheerfully when he had gotten close and Casey's distaste for it only grew. "Go ahead, you guys, the world needs its heroes…"

From behind, the blond man wrapped his arms around her shoulders and, pulling her to his chest, kissed the top of her equally pale head. "We'll be back before you can drop a sick fire, okay?" Dave murmured, releasing her, and Casey smoothed out her stolen hoodie sourly without looking at either of them.

"Yeah, okay…" Casey waved Dave away as if he were a messenger in Cleopatra's temple and slouched all the way to the fridge. She grumbled and opened the fridge door. "I get it. Go!" As they hurried toward the door, she couldn't resist the final acidic cry of: "It's not like there was some _important_ thing at home, like your _only daughter's seventeenth birthday or_ something that should take _precedence_ over your _secret identities_! There are _other_ heroes!"

However, when she turned around and expected someone to be there, all she heard was the front door close and their sassy security system say: "Dude, you just armed the security system with your daughter inside. How's she supposed to get out if there's a fire or some shit?"

"Jesus, John!" Vriska crowed, forgetting about the polish for a minute. "Didn't I teach you _anything_?! He was _right_ there!" Her toes were freshly coated in a dark azure polish, and Casey was lying across the floor with her feet in Vriska's grasp. When she glanced at the screen petulantly, Casey saw the grotesque mask of her parents' mystery villain flash across the screen and the delivery of a devastating blow to John's stomach.

"God…" Flinching as John took the hit like a champ and gave as good as he got, Casey closed her eyes and looked away – anything to forget the violence onscreen. Vriska had already refused to turn it off, so Casey didn't bother asking. She _knew_ this was what her dads did when they weren't hosting sick radio shows or messing around in the major ectobiology lab in town, but she couldn't –no matter how angry she was with them- watch as Dave and John got beaten to a bloody pulp.

"Can we watch something else?" Casey mumbled, her fingers clenched tightly around one another to stop her from fidgeting. "I'm really _not_ about watching this..."

"Then you're FLARPing without armour, chick." Vriska returned to painting her toe nails while the commercials rolled as if nothing were wrong, advertising toothpaste and razors while her fathers took off-camera damage. "This is the _best_ thing on TV right now!"

"What?!" Sitting up on the heels of her hands, Casey gaped at the nonchalant tending her toes. "Are you joking?!"

"Nah," Vriska met her stare with her good eye. The blind eye had long since been replaced with a mechanical one John and his ectobiology team had tinkered around to make, but she still kept it covered by a dark eye-patch. Her arm, on the other hand, she was proud to display; her biomechanical limb was almost a point of pride. "Reality TV has no dice against your dork dads duking it out with some baddie."

"They're getting _destroyed_ by this guy!" Casey yelped, horrified by Vriska's insensitive attitude. "How can you watch this?!"

"How do you watch a slasher film?" Vriska countered, "Or a fistfight at school? And don't deny it, I _know_ you've seen _both_ of those more than once in your boring life."

Casey flinched at the truth in the callous woman's statement. She and her friends loved to go see those cheesy, splatter-porn horror films like the _Saw_ series, and just last week she had been one of many circling a fight between fire and water wielders. It had ended with burns and steam, brutal beyond belief, when their security head had used his force fields to isolate the two combatants. She, like every other bystander, had been pulled into her counselor's office for a heavy-handed lesson on "stepping up" and "being a hero" from a dumpy old woman who knew nothing about it.

"I just-" Casey cringed at her pathetic excuse and spat it out. "I don't know... I just _do_."

"I know why." Vriska smirked, pulling her foot up to paint her pinky toe more accurately. "We, as a species, are fucked, Casey dear, and we _like_ the gore, and we _like_ the violence. The "civilized people"; they'll chew us up and spit us out if they have to, and all the people would do is watch it and laugh."

By the end of her rant, Casey had gotten a grip on herself. "Lemme guess... "Society is crumbling"?"

"I _wish_." Vriska sneered to herself, focusing on capping the bottle of polish, and she busied herself with muting the commercial before she met Casey's eyes again. "Society is laid in cement and steel, Casey. It _needs_ to crumble, but we're too shit scared to let it go."

Usually, Casey would have tried to make a joke and broken into a few sloppily-tuned lines of 'Let it Go', but Vriska's expression was grave and they were beyond jokes. Casey gaped at her voicelessly, her mouth flapping without words, until Vriska looked away and unmated the television.

As Casey struggled to get her mental bearings, the sounds of the battle jarred her and smacked against her back like deft blows. She stared down at her greyish-blue toes, shining in the lights as innocent little daggers from Vriska, reminding her that everything the usually-manipulating woman had said was sticking the dartboard of truth.

Something was rotten here and Vriska, despite her cruelty, was one of the few who could smell it.


	2. OUTAPLACE

Casey woke up later that night, hearing their security system speaking more quietly to whoever had opened the door, and her fathers' bass voices shook the thick quiet of the big, groggy house.

"Dad?" Casey mumbled, sitting up to find herself curled into the corner of the bent couch, covered by the blanket usually draped over the back. She rubbed one eye sleepily: "Dad?"

"Shhh..." In the dimness, Casey watched John's silhouette wander into the living room and she stiffened when his slumped shoulders told her all she needed to know. "go back to sleep."

"What happened?" Casey hissed, leaning on the back of the couch to push herself a little higher. She could see the crack in his glasses catching the light from the entryway and, too anxious to notice, she chewed her lip to bleeding. "Dad, are you both okay? Where's Dad?"

"Casey, could you go upstairs?" John asked sweetly, trying to divert her attention, but Rose cleared her throat from out of sight and John tensed. "Actually... stay _here_."

Casey ignored John. "Dad?" She cried out for Dave nervously, struggling to get to her feet without taking her eyes off of the lit hallway stemming from their front door. No one could get all the way upstairs without crossing that open space and being seen; not even Dave. "DAD?!"

"Casey-" "_DAVE?_" Desperate, Casey pushed past John and felt him wince under her hands, but came out into the better lit hall a bit too late. Jade had already closed her wormhole/portal behind Rose and all she saw was the tattered end of Rose's scarf disappear into the darkness. It made the teenager choke, seeing a few dark spots on their cream-coloured carpets where Dave had just been standing. Casey quivered, her eyes filling with tears, and she let Jade hold her tightly when those tears spilt over.

"Oh, honey," Jade murmured, rubbing her back comfortingly as if the circles she was making would remain to protect her when she left. "Casey, sweetie, shhh... shhh... it's going to be alright, Casey."

"But Dad-" "He's going to be _fine_, sweetheart." Jade hugged her tighter, forgoing the circles to clutch her tightly with both hands. "Dave is just tired and he didn't want to worry you. The blood is from a split lip, and he looks worse than he is, okay? He'll see you in the morning." Jade took both of Casey's hands in hers, something catching her attention from out of Casey's view, and she smiled sincerely at the teen until Casey returned the gesture. "Now, _you_ should get your seventeen year-old tush to bed. I think you have school tomorrow, don't you?"

"On a Sunday?" Casey sighed, shaking her head at the somewhat disconnected space hero. "No..."

"But it _is_ late." John said sternly, "Even for a Saturday. You should get to bed." He put his hands on his hips, the gesture made less by the great tear across his uniform, and Casey submitted finally to going upstairs. She waited for a few seconds, catching her breath as she tip-toed into the bathroom, and pressed her ear to the tiled bathroom wall.

She tensed, squeezing her eyes shut, and slowly but surely Dave's low rumble eased the tense coil in her stomach, and Casey let her knees give under her weight with a dull thump as she hit the floor. She was used to Dave dying –he was a Time user, so it was no problem- but the way her fathers worked had never been normal to her. Even when she was nothing but a twinkle in her fathers' eyes, they had gone about things a very different way.

* * *

Standing in the bright glow of the machine, John and Dave stared at the hologram image in awe. When they had given the machine their genes to make the baby, Dave had been dubious, but now he was sure. Chubby cheeks, a few wisps of platinum, long doll-like lashes, and little fighter's fists. Their daughter was-

"Perfect." John smiled, taking his hands off the control panel to admire the image. Dave nodded mutely, overcome, and hugged John to him without looking away from the shining, translucent prediction of what their daughter would look like.

"She's beautiful, John." He whispered, letting John rest his chin on his shoulder. "This... I just- _Christ..._"

"Never thought I'd get _you_ speechless." John smiled with the blond, watching the imade fade as two options appeared on the touchpad below.  
'Synthesize' and 'Create'.

"Quick." Dave was almost excited. "Push the button, John." Dave urged him on, grabbing his arm, and suddenly they were tangled in a headlock-hug.

"We _can't_!" John protested, struggling with his partner. "Dave, that's not how ectobiology _works_! She needs to incubate and synthesize over the course of nine months to ensure she has the most stable development pattern!"

*"WHAT?" Dave groaned, carding his fingers through his hair. "We've waited three weeks already to get all the equipment calibrated! _Nine_ months?!"

"She's a baby like any other, Dave!" John caught his spouse's shoulder and smiled at his stubborn scowl. "_You _took nine months, and look how well you turned out."

"_John_..." Dave drawled, leaning his weight against the wind user entirely and complaining against his chest. "you're teasing me, dude. First we're having a baby, then we can't, and then you won't use a surrogate so you have to _build_ a machine, _and_ you cockblock my to build it! And now, after _all_ your wicked temptations, I can't even hold the product of my dick's suffering for nine more _months_?!" Staring at John, all Dave got was a nod. His hands dropped to hang at his sides. "Cold, dude, so cold... it's _colder_ than cold. Somebody must have left the _freezer_ open! Quick, John, close it before I become an ice man. I'll freeze _solid_, and then this cool kid will be a cool _kidsicle_ in a museum for some lame, kidless tool to go see and be like 'Aww, man, that's not cool.' Do you want centuries of parentless people to come and see me chillin there, John? Is that what you want?" By the end of his rant, Dave had freed himself from John's grasp and, clenching his hands into fists, thrown both hand up to curse his childless fate. John sighed as he watched Dave drag out his dramatics, unable to stop his eyes from lingering on Dave's backside when he turned around to gesture to the hologram. "I have this _beautiful_ angel within my reach, and you want me to wait _nine_ months?" John smiled indulgently and wrapped his arms around Dave's slender hips from behind, tucking his chin onto his collarbone.

"Yep." John mumbled, kissing behind Dave's ear. He knew Dave would melt into it and knew that his gesture would draw a warm, rich sigh from him, but today Dave surprised him.

"Well..." Dave turned around in the tight circle of his arms, catching John's face in his hands, and pulled him closer as if he would kiss him. John felt all his muscles tense, eager for husband after so many solitary nights building the synthesizing machine, and he bent his head toward the smile curling on Dave's lips. "too bad." Dave flung his hands back, slamming them down on the control panel and touchpad, and the machine roared to life like an angry beast.

"DAVE!" John staggered around his blond lover as quickly as possible, panicking as he tried to undo the command Dave had given. He fumbled with keypads and buttons, flipping switches and turning knobs, but the lights began to dim as suddenly the main chamber of the machine was filling with a thin haze of smoke.

"Jackpot." Dave grinned, watching as a large glass beaker of green goop lowered into the super-charged gas cloud, and his glasses were lit by the occasional spark between the two pieces of glass. "Three, _two_… one."

In a sudden crack of blinding manmade lightning, the goo was electrified, the cloud of smoke was activated, and the glass casing for the fluid within the inner sanctum shattered. "Done."

As the larger glass dome lifted, the small wet snuffles reached John's ears and he flinched, preparing himself for the worst. A horrible half-formed being, a malformed little child, some mess of goo and ham-handedly made human flesh that was struggling for breath. However, a strong, healthy, _normal_ cry urged Dave forward to pick up the child and John was shocked by the soft, wordless coos his spouse was making.

"Dave…" John called, taking an anxious step forward.

"Shhh…" Dave mumbled, bouncing the baby in his arms without turning around to face him. "Shhh, abby, shhh. Don't cry. Daddy's here…" John inched closer now and dreading what he could have done wron. He hadn't really even tested the machine with any superhero genetics, and it sank a brick iunto the pit of his prankster stomach. Dave turned around, his shirt stained by the green electrolyte-rich goo and a few pinpricks of blood from the baby's legs. She rested in the cradle of his strong arms, her chubby calves just nicked by the shattered inner chamber, but it was not serious and there was already a thick wisp of platinum hair growing on her head. She had, upon John's tentative further inspection, ten fingers and ten toes, and all her limbs, and the cutest button nose he had ever seen. John almost lost his breath when her little hand closed around his prodding finger and he looked up at Dave in shock.

"She's…" The wind user struggled for the right word and could not find one. "- perfect."

* * *

Lying in bed, Casey found herself wide awake and uneasy in her usual setting; her fathers were laying two rooms away, injured, and it irked her. She could _feel_ the tension in her house more than her cheerful birthday vibe, and it was driving her up her bedroom wall.

"Security?" She whispered,

"Yes, Casey?" The little pad on the wall lit up and the system logo appeared in the dark. "And before you ask, nobody is dead. They're still alive."

"I wasn't going to ask _that_…" Pulling her blankets up to her chin, Casey rolled twice and cocooned herself in her warm, familiar covers.

"Then ask away, oh mistress of infinite curiosities- oh seer of unfilled truth spaces- oh commander of gaps in her unending knowledge block- oh-"

"Did something seem… _weird_ about them to you?" Casey waited in silence, tormenting herself now that she had voiced her concern, but the system remained silent. "Security?"

"I don't have an opinion, one way or the other." Replied the system carefully, its logo shrinking onscreen as it lied to her.

Casey pulled the tablet interface off the wall slot to come face to face with her security system. "Don't dick me around or I'll play Papa's Cage films in the background of your program. _What_ do you _know_?"

The logo twisted and distorted itself before it snapped back into form. "I heard Dave say…" "Say _what_?"

"Shhh." The security system dismissed her, eager for the juicy gossip. "Dave told Rose that he saw Captain Creepy escape in what he thought was a time rift, but he wasn't sure. He said he'd check the stream for a flux when he felt better –he's sick, by the way."

"No _way_!" Casey squealed, trying to keep quiet. "_Neat-oh_! D'you think he'd take me with him?" Suddenly the screen was a live feed of John and Dave's disapproved faces.

"Go to _bed_, Casey." And then the screen was just black.


	3. OUTAYOURDEPTH

"Daddy? I'm leaving now…" Casey poked her head into her fathers' room, her hands stuffed into her sweater pockets. Even though her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail and tied off tightly, it still managed to fall in her face. Her eyes swept over the darkness of the room, unable to catch sight of her father being awake, and tentatively she wandered inside.

"Aight, Case…" Dave replied uneasily, shifting under his covers somewhere in the dark. "have a good one. There's some cash on the counter for you… I was going to take you out myself, but I'm not feeling so hot."

"Are you _okay_, Dad?" Casey asked anxiously, clenching her hands together in her front pocket. "Do you want anything? Soup… _apple juice_?"

"No thanks, Case…" Dave's dismissal was a strange tinge to her already uneasy mood. He loved her attention now that they were getting older and she was no longer stepping on his heels, and she loved giving it. He never turned her away unless something was wrong.

"Is something _wrong_?" She questioned, biting her lip.

"Nah." Dave sat up, a dark silhouette on a lighter black. "I'm just nauseous…"

"_Dad_…" "_Casey_…" Sighing, she closed the bedroom door a bit and walked away, feeling as though she were making the biggest mistake of her life. Her papa was uneasy, her daddy was stuck in bed, and a _major_ villain might have just gotten away into the time stream.

And _no one_ was doing _anything_.

Disgruntled by the lack of action, Casey sauntered into her room and pulled her hair down again. The ponytail had to go. As she watched herself in her bedroom mirror, Casey frowned and smiled, and stretched her face into a wicked sneer that she'd seen Vriska give John to make him bend to her will.

"Ugh," She grimaced. "creepy." Tossing her hairbrush onto her bed, she stalked down the hall and, passing through her kitchen for some food and the money Dave had mentioned, she hustled out the door. She passed out of her hallway, barely glancing at the pictures she knew by heart, and she hurried past her family on her way out. The first of four pictures was of Dave, John, and the girls; the Betas in the paper after their first public celebration. They were all so happy and young, and it always made Casey smile to see it. In the second photo, Casey was only six; her hair was up in two ridiculous high pigtails, tied by Ghostbuster bauble elastics, and both her fathers looked so young. It was outside their house, the day they moved in, and the smile on her dark-haired Papa's face was a shining beacon of joy.

Casey didn't want to look at the third frame; there were too many nameless faces in it, and she had seen both her parents give it forlorn looks when she wasn't supposed to be paying attention. She faintly recognized a few of them, mostly the Betas, but Eridan and Sollux (who had lost touch with them when Casey was small) were helping Dave crowd a cranky-looking young man with the help of a towering man with a lazy smile. Nepeta, John, and Jade were helping, but Dave was the one that the nameless boy was really goofing around with. Casey had years of reading her parent to know the happiness captured in the stranger and Dave's eyes when she saw it. A woman with red eyeglasses was next to them, a wicked grin stretched so wide it must have hurt her cheeks, but Casey didn't know her name either. In another window of the third frame, the lanky, mellow giant was kneeling beside a shy boy in a wheelchair –the fondness in his eyes was unfakeable, and their unknown happiness made Casey smile.

From left to right in the last frame stood Roxy, Rose's sister, Rose, her fathers, Jade, and Jake, who was desperately trying not to look thrilled about getting to throw his arm around Jane. Casey had often asked to hear about Jake and Jane, begging John for one last bedtime tale of Xenon and Adventure, but he had never told her about Jane and Jake's not-so-happy ending until recently. Jane had died in a car accident –a distracted driver, the news claimed to help promote their 'no texting while driving' law- and Jake had never gotten over it. He was living out in the sticks somewhere and, although he was _getting_ their letters, he either refused to reply or didn't have the strength. Casey knew the thin, severe woman as Mrs. Lalonde, and John's father was unforgettable, but Dave had a sturdily-built man behind him that no one would identify for her. Even Roxy, with her gift of gab, went silent when Casey asked about the looming, Strider-esque figure.

"Who are you?" Casey mumbled, touching the glass tentatively, but the photo had no reply to speak of. With a heavy sigh, Casey slipped her feet into some sandals and left, missing something that would have horrified her. However, a lot of things horrified her today, so she didn't miss too much.

Her headphones weren't on sale anymore, so the money her dads left her _just_ covered them and she was left looking for free entertainment. Unfortunately, the skate park was closed and that left her with few options for the afternoon. Disgusted by such a boring day, Casey ducked into the library and hoped she could snag an archive computer to search up the mysterious man no one seemed to recognize.

"Morning..." Casey waved to the lady in the librarian's chair, vaguely disappointed the more friendly worker was not present, but she didn't dwell on it. She breezed past the line up, not recognizing any of the faces she saw for a change, and she snuck past the computer monitor in case her fathers had been telling people to keep her in the dark or something. It was almost _too_ easy to slip into the computer room, which was surprisingly full, and Casey took a chair next to another girl and the door.

For some reason, her login wouldn't work. "Great..." She muttered, her fingers a flurry of keys and frustrated retyping, but nothing worked.

"Something wrong?"

Casey jumped, the sudden question an unwelcome surprise, but it was only the girl at the next computer over. She sighed, "My login isn't working. I've tried _everything_ and I _can't_ get in." Slouching down in her chair, Casey forwent her 'cool' for a moment and pouted childishly. "I only need, like, _five_ minutes!"

"Here." Pushing out her chair, Casey's neighbor offered her station to her with a sweet smile. "You can use mine. I'm pretty much done here."

"Are you serious?" Casey gaped, her bangs sliding down out of her ponytail in a wave of blond hair and hitting her nose. When the girl offered it again, Casey muttered a 'thank you' and took her vacated seat quickly, opening the state archive to scour the server.

"Strrr... eye... derr." Casey muttered, quickly filling out the form, and her neighbor frowned at her.

"'Strider'? _That's_ a funny name."

Casey looked scandalized. "It's _cool_! What are _you_ talking about?" She forgot her computer for a moment, missing the activity that her search had pulled up. "My dad is _Dave_ Strider! What's _wrong_ with being a Strider? We're _famous_!"

"'Dave Strider'?" The stranger looked baffled. "_I've_ never heard of him."

"You know, the Time Turner of the Betakids." Casey elaborated, "He's blond like me, has sunglasses..." Again the stranger shook her head. "Whatever, nevermind." Casey looked at her screen, eyes widening at the two school records it had pulled up, and she clicked the mouse over the first, only to be disappointed. "Ugh. Dave."  
But the next one was promising.

"'Dirk Strider, fifth year cancellation record'?" Casey scowled at the girl. "That's weird. It's not usually policy to cancel a student's fifth year.

"Yeah..." Casey had to agree. "it is pretty- AH!" Suddenly, Casey's computer crashed, blue-screening, and she shrieked in horror at the sight of her only clue disappearing behind a blue wall of error code and disaster. "NO!"

"Oh jeez!" Casey moved out of the technician's way when she ran in and quickly stepped away, not wanting the blame for the broken system. She hurried out of the library, her head down, and didn't bother to look around until it was _too_ late.

"Hey! Watch where you're going!" Casey hardly recognized John in a suit, his hair neat and slicked back with a firm layer of product, and it took her a minute to form a reply. "Hello? Are you deaf?"

"Pa-Papa?"

"Oh, great." John rubbed the bridge of his nose, briefly displacing his now-silver glasses, and sighed heavily. "Of course _I_ get the brain-damaged one. Look, _I'm_ not your father, and _you_ nearly ruined a five _hundred_ dollar suit, you hooligan. Got it?" John was snappy and stiff and Casey, flinching at his harshness, nodded. "Good. Now get out of my way. I'm late enough as it is _without_ you messing around in my way!" Without any further ado, he stepped around her and hurried on down the sidewalk with Casey's eyes glued to him until he was out of sight. Her heart didn't want to believe it, but her mind was screaming the answer that Security had given her last night.  
"_Dave told Rose that he saw Captain Creepy escape in what he thought was a time rift, but he wasn't sure. He said he'd check the stream for a flux when he felt better..._"  
Stumbling, Casey took off in a sprint toward home and, passing where the Betakids' statue _should_ have been, she felt tears prick her eyes. Something was wrong.

"Dad, Dad!" Bursting through the front door, Casey kicked off her shoes, leaning on the wall, and froze at the sight of the new photos. The Betakids were gone, filled by a lonely photo of her father in a cap and gown, diploma in hand. Her family photo was now a degree in physics. They joyful photos of nameless heroes were gone, replaced by a class photo of miserable teens and a beaming valedictorian, and her five families were cut down to one.  
Just Dave and his mystery relative.  
"_DAD_!"

"Casey?" Struggling to cover her tears, Csey sprinted up the stairs, unsure whether she was flying or running, until she was standing in the doorway of her fathers' bedroom. "Casey, come here." In the blink of an eye, Casey was circled by Dave's arms and he was struggling with some unknown pain.

"Dad, what's going on?"

"Time has been tampered with." Dave stroked her hair, his hand shaking, and Casey squeezed her eyes shut. "Our opponent _did_ get away, and now he's ruining the past. I… I'm a bit busy. I want you to promise me something, Casey."

"_Anything_."

"I'm going to have to go soon. I can't keep you in existence if I stay corporeal, and I _need_ you to go back for me. I can't directly interfere right now. Time is too fragile from all that's already been done to it. But you, you girl, you can fix this. Promise me you'll go back."

Casey couldn't help clenching her fists in Dave's shirt, making him wince, and she gasped quietly to hold back a fresh wash of tears. "Can't you come with me?" Casey whispered, "I don't know where I'm _going_."

"I'll guide you." Dave reassured her, tearing up. "I already sent a message back in time to someone who can help you, but I can't stay. I don't need little me to wig out."

"But Dad-" "Casey, I've gotta go _now_." Dave pushed up a little on the bed, dislodging Casey, and she watched in horror as her father's legs faded to nothing. "Go back. Just close your eyes, and feel like you're falling, and I'll do the best that I can."

"Dad-" "_Go_." And suddenly Dave was fading fast, fracturing like a pane of glass, and Casey whimpered when he finally disappeared from existence.

"…don't leave me by myself." With a shaky breath, Casey got up and looked around anxiously, the room feeling a lot emptier without Dave in it. Casey looked around and watched the final memories fade from existence with a faint heart; laundry seemed to evaporate, the final photos twisted and warped within their frames, and Casey was horrified to see that even her father's first shitty sword began to fade. She struggled to her feet, the bed remaking itself as soon as she left it, and dove to wrap her tiny hands around the worn leather handle. With a grunt, she made it and clenched her fingers tightly around the hilt; it rubbed harsh against her palm where it had been damaged, but she refused to let go of Dave's final relic. She pulled at it hard, grunting and straining until the bolts securing it gave out and she let herself fall back as if Dave would be there to catch her. As soon as the sounds of her home faded into deafening silence, Casey was bombarded by noise; clashing steel and the winds of a hurricane battered her ineffectual summer attire enough to chill her to her core, but she soon forgot it.

Across a wasteland of tattered urban rubble stood her parents, looking weary and worse for wear, but alive. Casey had to restrain herself from throwing her body into John's arms, ducking for cover, and she prayed fiercely that they would mistake her for a simple bystander. Dave, who was engaging his enemy viciously, had talked very seriously about being recognized when travelling in time. Looking up, she realized she had missed this part of the fight by closing her eyes, and she was unprepared for the severity of the beating Dave withstood. She flinched at the sight, watching him take hit after punishing hit, but Dave's return was just as forceful and his foe recoiled from the hit.

Casey barely made it behind another piece of cover before the villain's retreat obliterated her former hiding spot. The gravity of the situation settling in her stomach, Casey's mind worked a mile a minute. If she could manage to throw him toward Jade's void would suck him right in, righting her own timeline, and her father could retrieve her from the past. Ducking behind a chunk of lopsided sidewalk, Casey waited for Jade to open the void as cover and bit her nails as the seconds ticked down. Casey began to squirm, seeing the winds pick up small, uprooted bushes, and John's expression darkened.

With three minutes left, Casey's fathers closed into a more defensive position, sharing quick looks with Rose and Jade that conveyed some meaning. Their enemy was quick, countering attacks as they executed them, and Casey could see them getting worn out. However, as the final minute to the appearance of the void, Casey was shocked to find her position shifting and, with a final look of horror from the ground distorting beneath her feet, Casey saw the villain directing his palms her way, and her stomach sunk as she fell.

She fell, watching the tunnel grow up toward the sunlight as she plummeted down backwards, and in those few seconds it was peaceful. All was quiet, filled with the fading light from above, but suddenly the opening of the wormhole was too far and her perspective changed. The walls of her tunnel grew dark, luminescent spirals of colour so bright it hurt her eyes streaming past her and burning themselves across her retinas. The colours flew past, speeding up as she fell, and slowly Casey started to scream as it became too much. There was too much sound, too many sights, too much sensation and the fall was suddenly a searing descent into an unknown that chilled Casey's blood to ice.

As fiercely as that icy fear had gripped her, suddenly it was on her skin and, shocked, Casey barely had time to see the portal close in the gray sky behind her before she was pelted by harsh rain. She hit hard when the ground came up to meet her, the blow drawing a short shriek of pain when she landed on her back, and suddenly she was tumbling down- down- down over and over again. As much as she tried to claw herself to a stop, Casey found her hands sliding through mud and slowly she came to a stop at the bottom of what she realized was a hill.

When she pulled her face up from the grass and muck, she faintly recognised a faint multi-coloured glow appearing and disappearing further on in the distance. Groaning and rubbing her sore ribs, Casey struggled to sit upright and hissed with displeasure at the layer of mud she'd accumulated from her clear descent down the hill. She could see Dave's shitty sword sticking up out of the mud a little further up the hill, where she had tried to use it to stop herself but lost her grip. However, when Casey looked to other way, a tall figure was coming out from between the trees, mostly obscured by the umbrella he carried.

Instantly Casey was struggling to her feet, managing to get up even with her entire body aching, but as much as she tried, she couldn't quite get her father's sword.

"Yo." When the stranger spoke, Casey choked and her footing slipped. She teetered backwards, her arms pin-wheeling, but one hand on her lower back steadied her. "I'm here to help."

"Like _hell_ you are." Casey pulled away from the stranger, struggling back and up the hill to avoid him. "Step off, creep." She slipped, cracking her sore arm off the turf, but she kept her scowl in place and her wary eyes on the stranger.

"I'm not a creepy child molester, I swear." He muttered, raising his hands up around his ears. "Your-" "That's what they all say." Casey hissed, managing to climb a little higher. He sighed, but continued. "Your dad sent me to come get you."

Casey jerked, tears springing to her eyes, and stiffened. "My dad is dead, you asshole. Nice try." Reaching slowly for his back pocket, as if he were being held at gunpoint, the stranger held something out to her that she thought she would never see. Resting in the palm of his hand, extended to her like feed to a horse, were Dave's shades. Casey's breath caught, inaudible over the rain, but her eyes swept over them, tracing the paths of the raindrops, and fell upon the wide crack in the left arm from where she had gotten Dave with John's pogo-hammer as a child. When her eyes lifted to the stranger's face, they softened slightly. "How did you _get_ these?"

"When Dave disappeared from your timeline, he didn't die." He explained, still holding the glasses out for her to take. Casey leaned back instead, clinging almost fearfully to the slick handle of her father's first blade as though the rain would wash her away. "In order to keep you in existence, he fragmented himself into tiny pieces and scattered them along the timeline from this point on to cement your reality. He sent this one back to me, saying to come find you here."

"Why?" Casey struggled to understand how this stranger could be so important that her father would send him the message and not his or John's past self. Even Rose or Jade would have been more suitable options that this creepy stranger. "Why would Dad send you to get me? Who even _are_ you, anyways?"

Lifting the umbrella a little more, a sturdily-built Strider-esque man looked back at her through his dark, pointed shades. "The name's Dirk. I'm your Dad's older bro. Does _that_ answer your questions?" Suddenly his hand was there to support her when her legs gave and Casey let herself slide down the rest of the hill on her butt, the sword clutched tightly in both hands.

"D-Dad had a brother?" She gasped, staring at Dirk in awe from the ground. She looked almost directly into the rain, unfazed the cold shower, and gaped at him.

"Course he had a brother." Dirk snorted, reaching down to pull her to her feet. "A cooler, smarter, and so much more _ironic_ -not to mention handsomer- brother, but a brother none the less."

"He never said _anything_ about having a brother..." Casey mumbled, staring down at the sword now with increasing confusion. "I don't get it. Your picture is in the front hall..." Casey would likely have sat there all night, her face scrunched up in deep thought, had Dirk not suddenly dropped the warm weight of his coat over hr dirty shoulders and stepped forward so that his umbrella sheltered her from the rain. "Why didn't he tell me when I asked him about you?" Searching his dark lenses for her answer was a waste of time, and Casey looked down at the sword again as Dirk heaved a heavy sigh.

"Let's go."


	4. OUTAYOURCOMFORTZONE

When the walk began, Dirk and Casey both fell into the habitual Strider silence and marched back through the woods like soldiers. Every so often, Casey's body protested the walk, but she kept that to herself and took a shallow breath. She didn't know this Dirk, for all his similarity to her father, and she wanted to feel out his character before she began confiding her trouble in him.

"We can slow down once we're in a better part of town." He told her quietly, putting a hand on her back to guide her around a hole. "These woods just don't have the best rep 'round here."

"I'm fine." Casey hissed, glancing around for any more of the holes she had missed.

"You're breathing shallowly. I bet you bruised a few ribs." Hopping a small ravine, Casey followed Dirk with a snort and squeaked shortly as pain in her ankle protested the action. "And that's definitely a sprain."

"Is _not_!" "Curl your toes." Scowling, Casey stubbornly did as instructed and, thanks to a shooting pain, tears welled up in her eyes. Dirk stopped walking. "Told ya."

"Suck dick." Casey sneered at him and trudged on, pulling his coat tighter around her mucky shoulders against the rain. He caught up with her quicker than she would have liked, the umbrella eliminating the drizzle that pierced the foliage above, but Casey kept her shoulders tight. She refused to relax, not wanting to give him another opening.

"Hey," Dirk prompted, "you gonna be butthurt all night?"

"I don't want to talk right now." Casey said shortly, "My parents are dead or don't know me and, nothing against you, but it's been a _long_ day." Looking up at Dirk, Casey's eyes still jarred on the sharp angles that had replaced Dave's rounded lenses. His hair was the same, his height was the same, and his voice was so similar that Casey wanted to rip the shades from him, screaming for Dave to stop playing with her. "And you're not helping."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." Muddy and soaked to the skin, Casey marched right out onto the sidewalk with him and hissed when the bright streetlights hurt her eyes. The sunglasses Dirk had offered her earlier suddenly dangled in front of her nose.

"Trade me for the sword." Dirk said, "Don't need heat first day on the street." He lowered the umbrella, starting to close it, and Casey let him slide the weapon from her hand and into the closing umbrella to conceal it as she slipped on Dave's shades. Casey kept up her morose mood as they crossed town, keeping under awnings and skittering through crosswalks like fugitives. They didn't meet many people on the walk –most kept their heads down and their eyes averted-, but at the base of an apartment building an old woman scowled.

"Just keep moving." Dirk muttered, "That old bag loves me, you watch." Guiding her into the lobby with the swipe of a key card, Dirk slipped it to her and gave the disapproving old woman a falsely-sunny smile. "Hi there, Missus Lehman, what are you doing up so _late_? I wouldn't want to see you _overexert_ yourself and, say, fall _ill_."

"Young man, you are _disgraceful_! How the state found such a ruffian fit for guardianship is _beyond_ me!" Puffing up like a bullfrog, the old woman shook a bony fist at Dirk and her little dog yapped fiercely. "I should report you for this!~" When she pointed at Casey, it was outraging and more than a little embarrassing. "Your brother is home!"

Dirk stood up a little straighter, crossing his arms over his chest. "My brother is none of your business. I'm not doing anything wrong. Last time I _checked_, bringing our cousin here isn't a crime." His growl was low, rumbling thunder in the rainy silence, and the elderly woman gaped at him. "You should come over sometime for dinner."

"I'd sooner _choke_ to death, you rapscallion." Scowled the other tenant, settling for fixing Casey with a frosty stare as she took the elevator up.

"Nice lady." Casey drawled,

"The sweetest." Dirk came up on her left, catching her elbow, and pointed her toward the staircase. "You should see her and Dave. I've never seen him take to somebody so quick."

Casey couldn't help but chuckle dryly at his sarcasm. "What's her deal?"

"I threw Dave through the front door as her kids came to visit. Apparently, that's frowned upon." Dirk's deadpan response made Casey double-take, only noticing his smirk the second time, and she sighed heavily. "He's fine though. You can barely see the scar."

"Scar?!" Casey yelped, ashamed to have given him that reaction.

"Yeah, the one on his ego."

Casey growled frustratedly, cursing being so gullible, and wracked her brain for a sly comeback. Her Egbert genes had to be good for _something_ besides Nic Cage film trivia!"

"Oh, I thought you meant the one over his eyes." Casey put a hand to her heart and caught her breath before she kept climbing and passed his stiff form on the stairs.

"Dave has a scar on his face?" Dirk's voice never changed, but Casey could see his posture shift to defensive as she kept climbing. "What from?"

"Oh, this big battle in the future. A bit after I was born, this one guy came at him with these" –Casey held her hands apart.- "_huge_ sickle thingies. Paya says Dad's lucky he kept his eyes and stuff. It went right across them and it tore real deep!" Careful not to overextend her lie, Casey pulled her excitement back and bit her lip to hide her smile. "...he says that if he hadn't had me, he wouldn't have made it."

"..." Dirk shrugged and continued up the stairs, his face schooled in indifference, and Casey let him lead her to an apartment with her father's prankster pride glowing in her belly. Her guide had lost the confident swagger of before and now his gait was businesslike and clipped.

"Should I wait out here or something?" Casey asked, pulling off his jacket and grimacing at the muddy mess she'd made.

"Nah." Dirk unlocked the handle and bolt, his movements deft and calm. "Dave's chill. Besides, I'm the one paying the rent."

"But I buy the fucking food." Suddenly Dave had the door open and was leaning irritatedly on the frame. "And the wifi. Who's this?"

"Casey," Dirk sighed, rubbing his temple. "meet my lil' shit brother, Dave." He pushed into the apartment, taking Casey by the arm, and he sat the stricken girl on the couch. The sight of her father, if younger and ruder than she remembered, had stunned her a bit. "Stay here."

"Oh wow, bro, isn't she a bit young for you?"

"I'm seventeen." Casey murmured, and Dave dropped onto the couch beside her.

"Bro's nineteen," Dave told her, raising his voice. "AND THIS IS STATUTORY!" His shout toward the inner part of the apartment went unanswered and he turned back to face her. "So how-" Suddenly Dave was thrown forward, a puppet's long orange limbs tangled around his head, and Casey burst into a fit of laughter.

"Headshot." Dirk stated sternly, returning from his search for a towel in dry clothes. He came around the couch and, instead of helping like Dave like she'd predicted, cuddled the puppet up into his arms. "Good one, Lil Cal."

"'Lil Cal'?" Casey perked up a little, remembering the name, and finally she recognized the toy she had set up a home for in the corner of her now non-existent bedroom. Dirk must have noticed, because he was quick to, as Dave sat up, push the puppet into her arms. "Wha-"

"If you could stop dicking around, that'd be great." Dirk said quietly, his eyes on his brother. "She just lost her parents and she doesn't need this." Immediately Casey was the centre of Dave's sunglasses-wearing attention and she said:

"Oh."

"It's cool." Casey said quickly, pushing her father's sunglasses up her nose. "I'm fine." She juggled the puppet in her arms, trying to treat him respectfully, and shied away from the attention.

"..." Dirk gave her a sharp look and then, trading a visual message with Dave, left again for a towel.

"Ugh." Casey buried her face in the puppet, her sigh heavy, and she glanced at Dave. He was staring back. "What?"

"Jeez, yo, I'm _sorry_." He muttered, "You are a hot _mess_ right now..."

"Oh, please don't, Da-Dave." Casey flinched as she nearly slipped up and she clenched her hands around Cal's arms. "Dave, don't pity me, please."

"Nah." Reclining against the couch, Dave stretched his arms along the back of the couch and sighed. "Pity isn't my style. You seem pretty touch and shit, so you'll be cool."

Casey stiffened, unsure of her younger father's lackadaisical attitude. "Really?"

"Yeah,"

"Oh," Casey blinked, sitting back with him. "thanks?"

"Any time." Dave's face didn't change, but his demeanor suddenly set Casey on edge.

"Here." When Dirk returned with a towel, he cut the tension like an Irish hunting knife and Casey gratefully tried to clean herself up with it. The cooling mud was making her shiver. "If you want some dry stuff, you'll probably fit Dave's." He let her try to scrape the brown from her skin, but it was obvious that she'd need to bathe. "Water's still hot."

Dave nodded in agreement, drawing her attention with a smirk. "Oh yeah, definitely. Go clean up, and if you still need to get warm, you can have _more_ than my clothes..."

When she waggled his eyebrows, Casey gagged and choked out: 'Oh God, Dave, we're cousins!" She recoiled and he recoiled, a flash of disgust on his face, and he pulled his arm back under watching Dirk's eye.

"Oh, eww. No. Previous statements retracted. I'm so out." He got up quickly, skirting Casey, and toed pm a pair of ratty sneakers as he left. Casey watched him leave anxiously, her mind struggling between letting him go and wanting him to stay, but she didn't protest his speedy departure.

"He'll get over it."

"My dad just hit on me and you're telling me that _he'll_ get over it." Casey grumbled, "What kind of older brother are you?" She waited for Dirk to reply, but was only met with his silence. "Ugh, whatever. I'm gonna take that shower after all." She left Dirk in the living room, nearly bringing Lil' Cal into the bathroom with her, and she set the puppet down beside the door. "You know what to do, buddy."

She felt she could trust Dirk a bit, but Lil' Cal had her back.

As Casey stepped out of the shower, she was shocked to find a pile of dry clothing sitting on the toilet beside her. She gawked, paling. When did- How could he-? Sighing, Casey shrugged on her father's familiar t-shirt nostalgically and, somewhat less comfortably, pulled on the pyjama pants before she left the bathroom.

"Yo, uh..." Could she really get away with just calling him 'Dirk'? "Uncle Dirk? Are you here?" She heard some noise in the kitchen and, walking toward it, she met flesh. "Oh, there you are. I-"

"Don't call me that..." Dirk muttered awkwardly. He looked up from his task, a jam-covered knife in one hand, and met her stare from behind his glasses, shuffling out of her path.

Casey frowned, scrubbing her wet hair with her towel. "Why not? You _are_ my uncle, right?"

"Technically,"

"Then why not? It makes sense for me to call you that now, sort of, and it's a lot easier to call you 'Uncle'. I have other uncles."

"Just call me Dirk, or Bro, or whatever..." Without his hat on, his hair spiked wildly in all directions, framing his face and mirroring his dark glasses. "Uncle's creepy. You're two years younger than me and have one year on Dave. You gonna call him 'Daddy'?"

"NO!" Casey grimaced and recoiled, "That's disgusting!"

"Exactly." Dirk sat down, carrying a plate of sandwiches and a carton under one arm. Stuffed in Cal's little backpack was a couple of cups. Casey watched him hungrily, her stomach empty since the morning, and the slight quirk of his lips told her he heard her belly when it groaned. "You coming or what?" Before he was finished, she was sitting beside him and eying the plate he extended dubiously. "PB and J?"

"Yeah," Casey took one, not wanting to complain that she didn't eat peanut butter, and bit into it. A rumble shook her stomach and she flushed. "Thanks."

Dirk made a noncommittal noise, pushing a cup of juice into her hands, and drank deeply from his own. "Don't mention it."

"'Kay." Casey was content to dig deep into the plate of sandwiches, devouring it quickly with the help of the apple juice. She hardly paid Dirk any attention until, when the plate was clean, he kicked his feet up on the table and put his arms up on the back of the couch. "Hey, Dirk..."

"Yeah?"

Casey bit her lip and, leaned on the arm of the couch opposite him. "D'you think my dad did right sending _me_ back instead of coming himself?" She waited in silence, feeling the weight settle on her shoulders until he licked his lips and spoke.

"Only time can tell." It was like a slap to he face, but Casey had no time to react before he continued. "Which, by the way, you need to catch up on." He pulled a laptop out from under the couch, lifting the top, and Casey only got a glimpse of disturbing background image before he had YouTube open.

"What is _that_ supposed to mean?" Casey felt her defensiveness rise, making her sit up straighter, but Dirk waves a hand to keep her sitting.

"Cool it, feisty pants. Do you want to explain a movie or song that doesn't exist? 'Predict' an election?" His point was good, but his evasiveness had riled her up and she was reluctant to admit his validity. "Well, no, you don't. You _really_ don't. Dave fucked around and he got in _such_ shit."

"Yeah, Dad told me." Casey bit harshly.

"I hope future me fucked with him for it too." Dirk shook his head and smirked. "How am future me? The coolest uncle or what?"

Her silence made his smirk slip and he frowned at her slightly. "What? Did I get lame in the next twenty years?"

"Uh..." Casey looked down at her lap, suddenly uncomfortable, and it was relieving to have him deflect the topic back to culture.

"Anyways, look up the top 40 and check out what's in theatres or something. Then we'll go to actual history." Unfortunately for Casey, the theatres were packed with films, some of which were cool enough to watch a bit of, and she finished closer to midnight.


End file.
